Krujë Highlands · Central Albania · Est. 2004
For over two decades, shepherds, woodcutters, teachers and agronomists of the Krujë communes have managed 1,240 hectares of communal forest and pasture together — through drought years, wildfire summers and the slow work of bringing eroded slopes back to life.
Figures verified against our 2024 stewardship report and the annual joint inspection with the Krujë Municipality forestry unit.
What we do, and why it matters
Every parcel we manage sits inside a ten-year management plan agreed with the members' assembly and filed with the municipal forestry unit. Firewood quotas are set per household, marked on the stump, and audited each November.
Rotational grazing calendars, water-point rehabilitation and stocking limits negotiated village by village. We do not fence shepherds out; we sit with them until the numbers work for the flock and the grass.
Dry-stone check dams, brush fascines and terracing on the gullies above Bruz and Zezë. Low technology, high labour, and after two winters the difference is visible from the road.
School forest days, summer field camps for students from Krujë and Tiranë, and a guided trail network that lets ecotourism pay a little of the cost of conservation.
From the field
14 October 2025 · Bruz
Black pine and Austrian pine on the northern exposure, downy oak and manna ash lower down. Eleven volunteer days, forty-two households, two donkeys, and one broken pickaxe handle. Survival will be counted in April.
2 September 2025 · Qafë Shtamë approach
Two ignitions were reported by shepherds within twenty minutes and put out with hand tools before the municipal brigade arrived. The volunteer watch rota worked. We owe the summer to the people who sat on that ridge.
19 June 2025 · Zezë
Sixty-eight families agreed to hold the upper pasture closed until 20 June. The sward height measurements taken in July were the best we have recorded since monitoring began in 2016.
Practical notes for land users
Cut firewood only from marked stems. An unmarked stump costs the whole village its quota the following year.
Leave standing dead wood where it is not a fire risk — it is the cheapest biodiversity measure available to us.
Never open the upper pasture before the date agreed by the assembly, however good the spring looks.
Report smoke immediately, even if you think someone else already has. Twenty minutes decides a fire season.
Voices from the villages
“My father grazed this pasture and so did his. In the nineties everyone cut what they wanted and by 2003 the slope above the spring was bare rock. Now my grandson plants there in the school days. That is the whole thing, in one sentence.”
